Category Archives: Hair

Today, I made the big chop! Cut off ALL of my hair. I still can’t believe I did it. I am rocking a BALDIE!

Let me start at the beginning. Years of relaxing and weaving extensions into my hair have left my natural hair quite damaged beyond repair. I realized that to grow new, healthier hair, I would have to start all over again with my hair. But I was filled with trepidation. I live in Lagos, where women are guerilla-fashionistas with thousands of dollars worth of hair weaves on their little fashionista heads. Nigerians are not kind to non-conformists and shaving off all of my hair would certainly place me in the non-conformist territory. Nonetheless, I decided to go ahead with the chop. It is just hair after all. Let the dice roll where it may…or something to that effect!

Still I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was concerned about how my new baldie would be accepted by the folks in my life – my family, friends and co-workers. I will try to provide general reactions to my new baldie as more and more people see it.

One of my goals with this blog is to document my hair journey – the transition of my overly processed damaged hair to hopefully a more natural, healthier head of hair. I will try to explain each step of my journey with pictures and my personal experiences as an Afropolitan going natural in Nigeria.

My other major goal is to further develop my interest in contemporary Nigerian (and African) art. I intend to blog my discovery on these pages and hope this will be a useful starting point for anyone else interested in art.

I will also occassionally blog any other fun experiences of my life in the next year. Why the one year window? I have a major birthday coming up next year and if not now, when? 🙂

And here without further ado are the pictures from my big chop!

The first row is the Before (this is the hair style I have been rocking for the last six months. It is an 8-inch human hair weave called “Romance Curls” made by Supreme. It can be found in most beauty stores in Lagos, although I purchase mine at the Downtown Hair Salon on Muri Okunola in Victoria Island Lagos).